


In the End

by mirrorheart179



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Ending, F/M, Fix-It, Introspection, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 05:11:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13674921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirrorheart179/pseuds/mirrorheart179
Summary: Expansion on an interesting antagonist; Armando Salazar has a wife and the sea has her voice.





	In the End

Hell is cold, though he cannot feel it.

When Armando Salazar wakes for the first time, water filling his lungs, he sees the red tendrils in the bay around him, like magma breaking through the earth, and expects to be burned. Instead, he feels nothing. Not the cold of the water between his lips, the ache in his skull, the tar-filled cracks crawling across his cheeks.

Hell is cold, wet, and dark. The magic has done its work well.

He breaks the water without a splash, hair still floating in the air around him as if he had never come up. He coughs, and the water seeps through his teeth, black as ink. It tastes of iron, like the air, like everything.

“Capitán!” Lt. Lesaro stands on the remains of _the Silent Mary's_ quarterdeck. Salazar joins him after a moment’s deliberation, finding he can move through the air as easily through the water, only staggering when he lands.

Together, they stand at the helm, watching the remains of his men wander in a daze, pressing hands to phantom faces, legs, chests, and arms, only to find empty air. Some wail. Others sit against barrels, cannons, and the broken mast, remaining limbs shaking. The surgeon, García, hovers by the starboard beam, no more than half his face and a hand remaining.

“What’s happened?” Salazar says suddenly, unthinkingly, “What have we done?”

Lesaro has no answer.

Hours turn into days, into weeks, and eventually into years. _The Silent Mary’s_ crew destroys countless ships, hoping that one will be the last sacrifice, that the magic in the Triangle’s depths will finally be satisfied. At first it is compulsion, then rage, then glee that fills their hearts when a new ship enters the darkness with them. Pirate or soldier, it matters not. All belong to the darkness. Meanwhile, the sea begins to whisper in Salazar’s ear, telling him of sparrows and compasses, because he belongs to her now. The dead can never tell her secrets.

He tries to pry her voice from his head, block her out, anything. The water may have his lungs, his blood, his life, but never _her voice_. His wife never belonged to the sea. She is not of this darkness.

(The voice disagrees with that, telling him stories of drowning beauties and spirits remaining unclaimed by the one she calls Jones. _Mine_ , the sea says, _just like you_.)

Salazar ignores the voice, but she only presses harder. She reminds him of the blood of his father, hot on his hands and the floor of their home, the face of the family he left in España, the bodies of every pirate he’s ever killed. Every sin drills into his mind and if he will not listen then she will show him their faces in the red water below.

He caves. He listens.

She promises vengeance on the one who trapped him in the darkness.

 ***

Her name was Rosalina.

She was beautiful, with long brown hair and warm eyes, but there were lots of pretty women and, honestly, Salazar had not particularly cared. There were more important things. He was a lieutenant aboard the _Princesa_ and his mind had already been set upon the extermination of pirates, though he had not yet become _El Matador_.

Still, she had smiled, and he agreed to dance with her.

They spoke of benign things between steps and he found her sweet yet shrewd, and clearly too clever for her own good. She smiled like she knows everyone’s secrets and then proves that she does. She told him several of them and he ended the dance knowing more about the room than he would have after hours of observation.

He stepped away first, some polite comment on his lips.

She smiled again, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

 ***

His Rosalina was ever-persistent and the voice has claimed this trait too.

_“Only when I’m right, cariño,” She said, “I only argue when I’m right.”_

The voice speaks constantly, swapping between promising him vindication for the life that the Sparrow stole from him and endless taunts for his foolishness in losing it. The emptiness of death fills with rage and he begins to leave solitary survivors among the wreckage of his crew’s attacks.

They will pass the message.

The Sparrow will know he is coming.

 ***

Every lunge, every man who falls is a tribute to the family he failed. If their blood will not absolve him of his sins, then it shall be an offering.

Father, mother, grandfather, wife, child, father, mother, grandfather, wife, child, father, mother, grandfather, wife, child, father, mother, grandfather, wife, child, father, mother, grandfather, wife, child, father, mother, grandfather, wife, child…

_Rosalina…Rosalina…Rosalina…_

 ***

Lesaro stares when he thinks Salazar is not looking. They stand in silence, hardly human now, as they have for twenty-five years.

Somewhere, high up above, the stone begins to crack.

 ***

The closer they get to the trident, the louder the sea becomes.

 ***

Salazar wakes at the bottom of the ocean, kneeling in the grit. The sea’s voice has gone silent and he draws his first living breath, noting the lack of iron on his tongue. He is whole again, weightless, and unquestionably alive.

The walls begin to close.

Though the fog of death has cleared his mind, he follows the pirates and their Sparrow. Lesaro and the others have fallen behind and this time he hesitates, just long enough for the gap between the pirates and himself to grow, but he grits his teeth and continues to climb. There’s no helping them now.

Because he waited, he never gets close to Carina, and the water closes over him as he clings to the anchor’s chain. The seawater rushes over him, pulling him down, filling his ears, his mouth, his nose, and fear grips his chest. Not again, not—

_Mine._

He releases the chain and bobs in the water for a moment, wondering if he’s already died and not noticed, if the sea has claimed him yet again. Then his lungs begin to ache.

He swims up and breaks through the surface. The sun is bright and hot on his skin.

 ***

He is pulled aboard the pirate ship and lands on the deck in a most undignified way, but quickly climbs to his feet. His leg aches dully, so he leans on the beam, and if his hand tremors in the tiniest degree, he doesn’t think about it.

None notice him at first. In fact, most of the men seem to be trying not to, which Salazar finds oddly gratifying. Then the Sparrow looks up.

“Ah,” He says quickly, rising to his feet, “You.”

Salazar raises an eyebrow.

The Sparrow looks him up and down, rolling on his feet and flailing his hands about, ever moving, before smugly asking, “Do ye surrender?”

“No,” Salazar answers.

Sparrow looks disappointed. “Oh.”

“Kill me.”

The entire deck goes still, but it is Sparrow again who speaks. “What? Why?”

“I cannot stop, I will not,” Salazar nods to the blade at Jack’s belt, “You must finish this.” Had he been a more devout man, he would have wondered if something divine watched over the pirate. Who was the patron saint of drunks and fools and pirates? “It is over.”

“I can’t kill an unarmed man, mate.”

“I wouldn’t give him a sword.” The girl pipes up, “Just a thought.”

The boy speaks next, “You went to all that effort to live, and now you want to die? What about Rosalina?” He’s half-holding the girl and, to his credit, barely flinches when Salazar glares at him. “I heard her when…when you, uh…” _Possessed him_ , Salazar finishes in his mind. _Not the wisest move, clearly._ “You have a wife and a child.”

He must think of an answer, then, because he had not expected this. “Not anymore.” He had counted every day within the Triangle, watched it crawl by, and twenty-five years was a long time. His Rosalina had no doubt moved on, his child had grown. They would not need him now.

“You can’t know that.” The boy, Henry, insists, as though reading his mind, “They could be waiting for you.”

Salazar had no answer for that, aside from a feeling of mild frustration. These were pirates, pirates he had hunted, why couldn’t they just kill him and be done with it? He had anticipated it, desired it, even, because the _Silent Mary_ and his crew and everyone else was gone. It was foolish to hope for anything more.

“We could take you to them.” The girl offers suddenly. She looks to Barbossa on her left, who looks like he desires to argue, but gives in with a roll of his eyes and a nod.

There’s some argument between the two children and Sparrow, who would rather leave Salazar on an island somewhere, not that he can blame him. Both seem to have taken the concept of family to heart and so Sparrow loses as well, stomping off and muttering something about swans.

He will return to España, no longer _El Matador_ , and be reunited with his wife and child.

The crew scatters, the Captain Barbossa at the helm and the girl at his elbow, reading from charts and maps and pointing into the distance. Sparrow parades around the deck with a bottle in hand. The boy hangs from the rigging comfortably, like he was born to it, and watches from above.

Salazar looks to the beckoning horizon.

**Author's Note:**

> I owe a tumblr post credit for sparking this idea, but I can't find it again. Everyone lived, it was great. I don't particularly care that Salazar died, but I do love a tragic backstory, so I took that fix-it concept and fleshed it out with some El Matador perspective.
> 
> Might get a sequel, I've named the kid and everything. We shall see...
> 
> Kudos and comments appreciated, please tell me if AO3's butchering my formatting again. All my love~


End file.
